


You're The Only Hope For Me

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brainwashing, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Friendship, Gay Sex, Het Sex, Love, M/M, Recovery, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Violence, World War II, post Cap 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:56:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky doesn’t have a soul mark growing up and that’s fine. Lots of people are nulls. A quarter of the population are null their whole lives and another quarter don't manifest until after they’re fully grown. But Steve has one, a bright blue perfect circle on his inner wrist. Then again, Steve’s the one with a heart the size of the Empire State Building so of course he’s got a soulmate. He’s happy for the guy and only a little jealous. Only a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Can I be another memory

**Author's Note:**

> I should be writing any one of three papers due Tuesday. Or at least writing Baby Can You Dig Your Man. Instead out came this insanity. I blame the brilliant and wonderful [suzukiblu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu). Five chapter is a rough estimate. May be a little more or less.

Bucky doesn’t have a soul mark growing up and that’s fine. Lots of people are nulls. A quarter of the population are null their whole lives and another quarter don't manifest until after they’re fully grown.

But Steve has one, a bright blue perfect circle on his inner wrist. Then again, Steve’s the one with a heart the size of the Empire State Building so of course he’s got a soulmate. He’s happy for the guy and only a little jealous. Only a little.

Turns out, Steve finds his soulmate during the war. They’re walking back from the Hydra factor, Bucky exhausted and unable to stop looking at his best friend when Steve clears his throat. He does it so many times that Bucky punches him in the arm.

“What?”

“I found him.” Steve says, He absently rubs at his wrist where the blue circle is hidden but he doesn’t need to. Bucky would’ve known.

“It’s a fella?”

“It’s Howard Stark.”

Bucky gapes. “Shut the fuck up. You’re joshing me”

“I saw it when they-” he waves at himself. “We just haven’t had a chance to talk.”

“Oh, pal, we’re fixing that.” Bucky declares. He’d throw an arm around Steve but he’s too tall and Bucky is too tired. He leans against him instead and laughs quietly. Broke little Stevie Rogers and Howard goddamn Stark. The universe has a sense of humor thats for sure.

It takes a while. A good while. They have to get back to camp first and then from camp to London but after that its easy. Bucky’s been sneaking around places since he was in the orphanage and getting into the R&D division on base at ass o’clock in the morning is cake. Howard is the only one there, goggles on, hip deep in some kind of thingumbob on the table in front of him a screwdriver in his hand. He’s got his sleeves rolled up and there it is, big as life, a blue circle that’s a perfect match for Steve’s just below his elbow.

Well he’ll be damned.

Bucky wanders over and he’s tempted to ask what Howard’s working on but that’s not his mission. Steve’s happiness is.

“So when are you going to talk to Rogers?” Bucky asks, no preamble. Stark drops the screwdriver and looks up. Bucky can’t read his eyes past the goggles but his face looks shocked.

“What?”

“About being soulmates. When re you two crazy kids going to talk because he wants to do something about it?”

“He does?” Howard pushes the goggles up off his face. It’s a mask of pure hope.

“I’ve known the guy since we were in short pants. Trust me. He wants.”

“I- Do you know if he’s up?”

Bucky grins. “Should be. Your serum makes him a bit…energetic.”

Howard thumbs his mark and stares at Bucky. He looks floored. He looks happy. He looks ready to cry. “I think I might just owe you one Barnes.”

“Don’t mention it. Just - the guy’s my brother and I've heard about the kind of man you are. If you don't care of him or I’ll kill you.”

“I won’t do anything to mess this up.” Howard promises, grabbing up his jacket. “I promise I won’t.”

Bucky nods as he watches Howard scramble out the door. He smiles because Steve deserves to be happy, the happiest guy on earth and if Howard’s eagerness is any indication, he’s got a soulmate who will probably help him get there.

The next morning at mess Steve is beaming like a complete moron. He’s got bite neck and cannot stop thumbing his soul mark. Gabe is asking if he bit himself shaving and the rest of the Howlies are laughing. Steve turns bright pink but he looks up when Bucky sits down. His expression is light and joy and gratitude and Bucky nods once. He doesn’t need more than that. He just wants Steve to be happy. It’s as good as being happy himself.

Howard makes Steve a shield and its very patriotic but at the center, beneath the star, is their soul mark. No one would know, unless you already know. It makes Bucky grin the first time he sees it. The fucking romantics. They’re cute. The two of them work on the uniform and the shield and weapons and its all up and up but they flirt like sixteen year olds and disappear every two or three hours to fuck.

Bucky caught them in a closet once, Howard with his legs around Steve’s waist as Steve lifted Howard up and down on his cock. They exchanged sloppy kisses when they weren’t looking into each other’s eyes like the rest of the world just didn’t exist. Howard gasped out “Damnit, love you Rogers,” and Steve returned “Love you more,” before kissing him again.

For almost a full minute, he stayed and stared without them noticing before he snuck away. He jerks off to them for weeks. He dreams of someone looking at him that way for months. More than that, he starts checking for soul marks again, like he did when he was little. He even asks Dum-Dum to check his back and ass but there’s nothing. He tells himself he doesn’t mind. He believes it after a few hundred times.

They put Peggy’s picture in Steve’s compass as a ploy that she heartily endorses. Same sex soulmates are all well and good in theory but the law says they’re supposed to remain platonic. Oh sure, two fellas or two dames can have can have matches but the bond should be platonic. They usually marry nulls and or other same-sex matches to hide. 

Howard’s the kind of guy who say damn the world and would ask Steve to marry him anyway. Steve is the kind of guy who would say damn the world and answer yes. But the big PR machine needs a Captain America who likes dames and so thats what they give them. They give anyone who asks the party line about Steve and Peggy and no one looks at billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Howard Stark and thats just the way the Commandos like it. Phillips is grumpy about it but Steve keeps Howard in check so, which no one else can manage so he doesn’t complain either.

The night before what promises to be a miserable mission in the Alps, Steve lies next to him on their bedrolls in their tents and says, “We’re going to travel after the war.”

“You and Howard?”

“Yeah. We want to find somewhere we can just be…” Steve sighs, “Us.”

“Good for you,” Bucky says and he means it. Or at least he tries to.

“And we want you to come with us.”

Bucky rolls over in his bedroll so he can stare at Steve in the darkness. “You want what?”

“We want you to come with us. There’s nothing for us in Brooklyn. Howard says you pick up tech faster than his assistants so it wouldn’t be a free ride and just- I can’t go with out you.”

Bucky gapes. “You want me to go with you on your honeymoon.”

“No. I want you to move with me when we get married. There’s a pretty big difference, Buck. You’ve always been my family. This way you’d be part of our family, mine and Howard’s too.”

“Can I think about it?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure. Just don’t take too long. The war could end any day now.”

Bucky never does get to answer. For him the war ends the next day when he falls from a speeding train into an icy ravine below. As he’s falling he thinks, he should have said yes, if not for himself then for Steve.

~*~*~

The asset is never by himself and always alone. His trainers and torturers and doctors surround him but they talk around him not to him unless it is to ask him a direct question or to give him an order. Not when they beat him. Not when they rape him. Not when they teach him.

He lives inside his head only there is nothing there. How to put together a AK-47, a PK9, a Walther. Tactical evasion techniques. Knife skills. He goes over them again and again like music lyrics when he’s awake because there is nothing else to think about. That is when he finds how to make his mind go completely quiet and that is his greatest treasure.

After that, He doesn’t mind anything because the worst of it is gone from his consciousness. Wipe him. Freeze him. Wipe him. Freeze him. Wipe him. The muscle memory stays. The lessons in strategy stays. The skills with weapons stay. What fades are things that are unimportant - his name, age, favorite color, dreaming.

They unfreeze him during many times during what they call the Cold War. They hand him guns, often sniper riffles but not always. Sometimes its explosives. Sometimes its wet works with knives which he forgets likes until he’s doing it again. Sometimes sabotage which is precise and often boring but his handlers like deaths that look like accidents.

It’s not until they send him to Afghanistan in 1989 that there’s a problem. It’s not a programing error. The weapon is fully functional. He eliminates the target, several Afghan civilians and military higher ups that escalate tensions in the area which were calming down. He returns to the extraction point unseen and unnoticed.

What his handlers see when he gets back to base is the problem. There is a lightening bolt on his neck so green its almost radioactive. Gloved fingers trace it and before he knows it he’s strapped to a gurney and a cauterizer is burning its way over the mark. It doesn’t work. Neither does a scalpel or a tattoo gun. The little green lightening bolt pushes through and the scientists resign themselves to the fact that they will not be able to remove what he hears them call a soul mark.

He knows what it means, the same way he knows how to walk or what the sky is or a train or a gun. It means that somewhere out there, there is someone who fits with him. He doesn’t know how that’s possible. He is an asset. Assets do not have soulmates.

They do not freeze him after their attempts to remove his mark which is a surprise. Instead they put him to work training the children in the Black Widow program and tell him that under no circumstances is he to cut his hair. He obeys, glad to have time out of the ice. He teaches them every thing he knows. His hair grows to his shoulders, covering the mark. He has his own training and he teaches the girls that as well, though many of the girls end up in the infirmary with broken limbs or internal bleeding.

He doesn’t like hurting children though he has killed his fair share. The asset takes comfort in the fact that Widow girls are not mere children. They are tiny killers. They grow fast and learn faster, Natalia fastest of them all. She is going to be like him, a walking weapon. He does not ache for her but if he could, he would.

After a one-on-one session, he asks her if she has a soulmate. She roles up her pant leg and shows him the bruise-colored shadow of an anatomically correct heart. He nods and says, “If you can, stay away from them. We are knives. We wound, even if we do not wish to.”

She nods and leans against him. He wraps his arms around her narrow shoulders and squeezes her tight against his side. She is perhaps seven, perhaps younger. He does not know. He just knows that this is the first time he can remember caring for someone. He pets her hair and she cries silently, a little girl with no family or friends crying for cryings sake because she has no other chance and the asset holds her and holds her. 

He is not surprised when they put him on ice less than a week later.

When they take him out next in 1991 and he does not remember the little girl he took under his wing. She is little more than a blur. In 2009 she is nothing at all and putting a bullet through her gut to achieve his mission means nothing to him.

They unfreeze him once more in 2014 for what his handler calls “the greatest mission he will ever perform for the world.” The asset doesn’t care about what the mission is. He just wants to do it and be done.

However, this time there is a man on a bridge who can meet him blow for blow. He is blond and strong and the asset knows him. He **knows** him.

The wipe doesn’t change that. The asset knows the man on the bridge. He fights his programing and saves the man, Steve, Steve Rogers, from the water because he knows him. He knows him but he cannot stay.

He cannot go back to base. Base is gone. The handlers there are liars even if base still stands.

Rogers is not a liar. Rogers said that he knew him and he does. He does know Rogers but he cannot stay with him either. He doesn’t know enough and it is not safe. The asset needs more intel. He needs to know how he was his friends, when. But, the asset thinks, if he is the James Buchanan Barnes, he will come back.

He needs to know too badly. He needs to know everything. He needs to know about who he is, who Rogers is, and he needs to know about the mark on his neck.

~*~*~

It takes him a year to function like a person. Another to start thinking like Bucky Barnes again. By then, Ultron has nearly torn the world apart and the Superhero Registration Act has come and gone. He watched Tony Stark fight with Steve on national news and ached.

They should have been allies. They should have been family. They should have been father and son. Bucky knows about the Valkyrie now and about Howard’s life-long search. He wonders how much of the Registration Act fight is about that and how much is about the Act itself. He doesn’t ask and stays basically underground while the Superhero Registry Act mess fills the country. He waits out underground because hell if anyone is going to tag him ever a-fucking-gain and when the whole mess is over and the act is repealed, he tracks down Steve.

Despite everything, Steve’s living in Avengers Tower which is a trip. Bucky cuts his hair like it was in the last picture of him from the news reels so he can look at least a little less menacing, puts a neon green hoodie, the color of his mark, on over his arm, and braces himself to try again. He goes in the front door despite all his instincts screaming against it and smiles at the pretty receptionist.

ready to try again.

She gives him a warm welcoming smile, bright white in her lovely dark face. “Hello sir, how may I help you?”

“I’m here to see Steve Rogers.”

Her lips purse at that. “And who may I say this is?”

“James Barnes.”

She nods, taps somethings on her desk, though he hears no keys clicking. When she looks up at him she smiles for real. “Go right to the back, last two elevators. Don’t bother pushing a button. JARVIS will take you there.”

“Thank you,” he looks at her name tag, “Anquenetta.” 

Anquenetta nods. “Have a good visit, Mr. Barnes,” she replies and isn’t that surreal. He can’t remember the last time anyone called him Mr. Barnes. It was sergeant in the army and hey you back in Brooklyn.

He waves as he makes his way to the elevator and it opens immediately which is lucky? No. A voice says “Welcome Mr. Barnes,” as soon as he steps inside and the doors close. It starts to move and Bucky assesses the situation. His lizard brain is freaking out a little but he’s been trained for decades so… what is he dealing with here. A computer no doubt. Artificial intelligence most likely. Sophisticated but how smart?

“You’re an AI?” He asks.

“Yes sir. You may call me JARVIS.”

“Okay. JARVIS. Where are we going?”

“Up.”

Of course. The robot brain has a sense of humor. Howard’s kid gave his pet computer sarcasm. Bucky wishes he were surprised but he’s just not.

“How many people are going to be there when these doors open?”

“Three sir. Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers, and SHIELD Liaison Darcy Lewis.”

So long as Stark isn’t wearing the suit Bucky can handle him and some girl. Steve will be a challenge but he won’t attack. Bucky knows it in his gut. The doors won’t be opening into a kill room. He’ll be okay.

He’s not expecting to be tackled as soon as the door opens though. He almost puts a knife in the other mans back but a quick inhale tells him its Steve because Jesus he even smells the same. He sheaths his small knife back in his wrist holster and wraps his arms around Steve back. He clings like a child and just breathes. It’s been a long time, so long, since he felt safe - not since Steve got them to London after Azzano - but he does now. He feels completely and utterly safe and loved. He’s got his brother back, thank you sweet merciful Christ and all the saints

“I missed you,” Steve sobs, unashamedly. “Oh god Bucky I- I-“ He hiccups and then he can’t talk. He’s too lost.

Bucky squeezes him tighter. “Shh,” he whispers. He’s read the papers and he can’t imagine. Waking up to a world where his best friend and soulmate were both dead, where Peggy’s brain was being slowly melted by Alzheimer’s. It had to be torture and Bucky knows from torture. “I know. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I missed you too.”

“Don’t leave again,” Steve begs. Bucky promises not to even though he doesn’t know if he can keep it because Steve never begs. He’ll try though. He’ll try so hard.

They stand together like that for another full minute before they pull apart. Steves face is wet and he wipes the tears off with his shirt before he turns around to make introductions. “This is Tony, Bucky. Tony Stark.”

He looks everything and nothing like Howard. He’s cocky and smug and there’s a glint of humor in his eyes but he’s got a edge to him that Howard never had, at least when Bucky knew him. He also looks tired. He nods Bucky and Bucky holds out his left hand to shake, just to fuck with him.

Tony doesn’t even flinch. He grins. “That is some hardcore hardware there, Heavy Metal.”

“Yeah well, HYDRA doesn’t fuck around.”

“Mind if I look at it sometime?”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay take off that awful hoodie and-“

“Not now Tony,” a woman’s voice cuts in. That has to be Darcy, the liaison. “Besides I love that hoodie. It’s my favorite color.”

Bucky turns to look at the new girl and she is- she is a hell of dame. She’s got legs for miles ample curves at the hips, kissable lips and a blue button-down blouse that shows off just enough cleavage to have gotten her in trouble back in his day.

And now he’s ogling. He is totally and completely hypnotized by the valley of her breasts. They’re rounded beautifully and pale like milk and he wants to touch them but thats not whats got him acting like a fourteen year old.

“Hey. Soldier Boy, my eyes are up here.”

“Your mark,” he says, still staring at her cleavage. It’s a bright green thing nestled in the valley of her breasts and if he’s not mistaken, its a lightening bolt. “What’s it of?”

“Oh.” She is suddenly less pissed off. She looks a little shy and tucks a strand of dark brown hair behind her hair. “It kinda looks like the lightening bolt from Harry Potter?”

Bucky lifts his hair off his neck. “Like this?”

Darcy is the one ogling now. “Yeah. Just like that.”


	2. If We Can Find Where We Belong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Bucky spend a little time alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINISHED ALL BUT ONE OF MY PAPERS. AW YIS. HAVE TWO CHAPTERS TONIGHT!

Darcy is bright as the matching green marks on their skin and she smiles like sunshine on a cold winter day. She gently takes his metal hand, laces their fingers together and drags him out of the room like there’s nothing strange about it at all saying “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. The least we can do is talk. I know its been a long time, like the longest time, but is it okay if I steal him for a little bit Cap? I mean-“ She flails with her free hand. “He’s my soulmate.”

“Oh, god, of course,” Steve says. He would never stop them going. He beams at them as they go. He’s still teary. He waves them off and Bucky can’t help but notice that the once-blue circle on his wrist is black. Black like mourning dress. Black because Howard Stark is dead.

Jesus Christ. All of a sudden, he remembers 1991 with painful clarity. He remembers sliding underneath a car. He remembers cutting break lines. He remembers the crash. He remembers shooting out the engine block from 200 feet away and the fireball it caused.

He lets Darcy lead him away because he can’t look at Steve or Tony right now.

The first time he touches Darcy with his own skin its the next room. It’s a small lounge with soft looking sofas around a coffee table. She stops in front of one of the couches and looks up at him. It’s almost as if someone else reaches out, careful, so careful because he used to be a weapon, still is a killer, and grazes her cheekbone with the fingertips of his right hand.

She hums in pleasure and leans into the touch until her cheek is cradled in his palm. Her skin is so soft and so are her features. It breaks him. He wasn’t supposed to have this. He never was supposed to have a mark, especially not when Steve’s is black because of him.

It’s too much. He thought he could do this, come to the Avengers, to Steve, and be fine but Darcy is here and Howard is dead at his hands and its just too much. He crumbles into her shoulder and cries like he hasn’t since before he can remember. 

Torture maybe? He thinks some of the torture made him cry like this, the first time they raped him he’s pretty sure, but he can’t remember it. And when he was being tortured there was no Darcy to run her fingers through his hair and gentle him onto the couch beside her.

“Well,” she whispers, “this is not how I thought this would go.”

He laughs a little at that. “I never thought this would happen at all.”

“Really?” She runs a hand through his hair again and again and again, petting him like a cat. He doesn’t purr because he is not an animal anymore. He could though. Her touch is heaven and maybe thats the point. Maybe thats why people make such a big deal about soul marks and soulmates. He’s getting calmer with every moment. Before long, he’s clear headed and almost clear hearted.

“You want to talk about that?” she asks. “I mean I’ve got the whole stranger-won’t-judge thing and the soulmate thing going for me. It’s a double whammy.”

Its on the tip of his tongue to let it all out. He wants to tell her. She feels like safety, like home when his mom was alive and he used to sleep smooshed together in a bed with his little sisters. She would listen. Instead he asks, “How’s Steve?”

Darcy frowns. “Um, fine? The mess with the Registration Act hit him pretty hard. I don’t think he really likes fighting with Tony. Now that they’re talking again he’s alright. Why?”

“His soul mark. It’s black.”

“Yeah. I saw. Everyone sees. He doesn’t talk about it.” She nuzzles into his hand. “Now that you’re here I honestly can’t blame him. I’ve had you for all of five minutes and I can’t imagine losing you. He doesn’t seem too bad off though.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Should he?”

Of course he should. He and Steve come from an era where men didn’t talk about the things that hurt them, that made them feel. The difference between Steve and Bucky is time and experience. Bucky’s had enough time and been through enough shit to not give one fuck about what he should and shouldn’t do anymore. “Do you know?”

“Do I know what?”

“Steve’s match.”

“It’s not Peggy Carter?” She asks. 

“Peggy Carter was a null.” She was when he knew her at least.

“But everyone thinks- I thought. Oh my god.” He looks and can actually see gears turning in her mind. She’s smart, his soulmate. She’s good at putting puzzle pieces together and she gets there fast. “Howard Stark spent his whole life and half his fortune looking for Captain America. Oh, god.” She looks up at him. “That’s awful and here we are,” she wiggles her fingers, “canoodling or whatever. We should go back in there. This has got to be killing him.”

“Steve will want us to stay, connect” Bucky promises. “He wants us to know each other.”

She nods. “He would. Right. Okay so. Ice breakers.” She winces. “I’m sorry. That was a horrible pun. Totally unintended. Um, what do yo want to know?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

Darcy talks and when she does, she seems to emit light. Maybe thats why their soul marks are a lightening bolt. She talks about her mom and little sister. She talks about growing up in Chicago. She tells him about chasing tornadoes with her physicist friend. She tells him about the paperwork involved in rebuilding SHIELD and where she was when Ultron hit and all the shoes Pepper Potts bought her when she moved into the tower and asks him questions he feels awful answering. Mostly because answers involve killing people.

“Favorite color then?”

Bucky shakes his head. “You know I honestly don’t know? They got that too.” He sighs. “They got pretty much everything.”

“But so much came back.”

“Yeah but- Imagine you forgot everything in your life before two years ago. You’re still you but all the details are shadows. You know its there. You know you should know things. But no matter how hard you push, you can’t reach it. You just have to sit around and wait for it to come to you.”

Darcy takes his flesh hand and holds it tight. “It’ll come back.”

“I think so,” he agrees. “I did. Me Bucky I mean. And I remember moments. That’s something right?”

“Are you kidding? Thats a lot. The whole internet’s seen the Winter Soldier and you are so not that guy.” She blushes. “You’re kind of charming actually.”

He rubs the back of his neck with his other hand. Hair catches in the plates and hurt when he yanks them free. “Well I used to be better at this. I was a null. I dated all the time, a regular ladies man, me.”

“Me too. I was never null but man, I could get in trouble.” She grins. “I used to dance on bar tops in nothing but my bra and Daisy Dukes. I was the queen of Thirsty Thursdays in college.”

Okay wow, he doesn’t know what Daisy Dukes are but she has some of the best breasts he’s ever seen in his whole life. The image is making him hard in his jeans at the idea of her dancing on a bar in just a bra. Maybe wet with beer? A man can dream. “That is a mental picture, doll face.”

“Oh god, you don’t even know. There are actual pictures.” She laughs and winks at him. “Be good and I’ll pull them out some day.”

She’s his type of dame, thats for sure. If he met her at a dance or in a deli, he’d have picked her up for sure. Turns out fate picked her out for him. “So how did you a girl end up in a place like this?”

She laughs. “Oh my god has that line ever worked?”

“Used to,” He says with a cheeky grin.

When she speaks her hands fly through the air. “Lots of things happened but mostly, I tazed a god and things kind of spun out from there.”

“Seriously?”

She beams with pride. “Yep.”

“Oh, doll face, I think it’s going to be easy to love you.”


	3. Face All the Pain and Take It On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky talk about Howard and Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Papers are done so its a two chapter night mofos. I really would write a whole separate Steve/Howard story if I thought for one second someone would read it but I dont so #kanyeshrug!
> 
> For suzukiblu as always

Darcy has actual work to do so as much as he’d like to, Bucky cannot spend all day every day following her around. He can’t even spend most days doing it. Besides, his damage is so deep that after two weeks they can’t get past the cuddles stage but they’ve started sleeping together, like asleep in bed which Bucky loves. She seems okay with it, just strokes his face with her soft hands and says “Don’t worry about it.” Then pulls him closer usually or if she has to go to work, she shoves him at Steve.

That second one is for the best because Steve is…not okay. Steve is fucking suicidal and Bucky wonders why no one else can see it. He doesn’t plan for the future. He doesn’t talk about it. He goes to the gym when someone asks him to and he reads on his StarkPad and he watches old movies on TMC. 

He doesn’t talk to Bucky. Bucky doesn’t blame him. He murdered the guy’s soulmate after all. If Steve had hurt Darcy, he would probably do more than give him the silent treatment. The thing is, Steve isn’t taking help from that Sam guy so Steve needs Bucky more than he needs to be hurt by him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, dropping onto Steve’s opulent sofa beside him. His knee bumps against Steve and Steve sighs.

“It wasn’t you.”

“Steve I-.”

“It. Wasn’t. You.” Steve grits out. “I’ve been telling myself that every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to sleep and every time I breathe in or breathe out because that’s oh I can get through my days, Buck. I need you to not take that from me.” He clenches his fist and the black circle twitches with the shifting tendons and muscles beneath the skin. “Please. Please don’t take you away from me too. I already lost Howard and Howlies and oh, god, Peggy-“ He stops and bites his lower lip. He breathes in once audibly. Then out. “And you. I lost you twice. Don’t do this to me.”

“Okay.”

“Sam said I should talk about him.” Steve says sadly. “He says its part of the grieving process. But I can’t talk to Tony. He’s been dead to Tony for twenty five years.” He laughs. “Can you believe it? Twenty five years. He was already gone a quarter century ago.” He rubs his wrist absently. “There’s no ice for me to find. There’s no miracle here. There’s just a mausoleum. Can you believe that? A mausoleum, Howard’s body. I couldn’t. Maybe Maria made him convert? Tony doesn’t even know that side of the family was Jewish.” Steve sank lower. “I think about it sometimes.”

“What?”

“What Tony’d be like if he were ours,” Steve chokes out, bitter and sad. “Would we have done his bris here or at that Synagogue in Italy, you know the one with the knocked out stained glass? Howard talked about buying and keeping it. He did you know, after I was gone. He bought that synagogue revamped the insides then deeded it back to the community. Edwin would’ve put that in place.”

“Steve.”

“He didn’t even tell Tony,” Steve chokes out. “About that so why would he ever talk about me. I was dead thirty years before he was born.”

“Couldn’t know he already had a spirit mom, could he?” Bucky asks. “It’s not the kind of thing his real life mom would want him to hear. I wouldn’t.”

“If you were a mom.” Steve replied, disbelieving.

Steve waits for the joke but Bucky doesn’t let him have it. “Yeah. If I were. You love him like you are one, so if he lets you be one, I guess you are one.” Bucky shrugs. “Isn’t this decade all about throwing off labels?”

“Right. And you get that because you remember me and Howard together. You remember us talking about having kids. You remember how he was, who he was. No one else knows. It’s killing me to try and explain him when I don’t have the ability to.” Steve’s voice drops to a whisper. “Just understand for today and I won’t do something lethally stupid tonight okay?”

“Thats not funny.”

Steve gives him a sharp look. “Do I sound like I’m joking?” He drags his hand through his hair then down over his face. “I need you to not be guilty, okay? I need you to help me remember because if I have to hold onto him alone I think it will kill me.”

“It’s only been a couple years for you Steve-“

“Six. It’s been six years for me. Thats supposed to be long enough to get the hell over myself. ”

“According to who?” Bucky demands. “I never got over losing Ma, over them taking my sisters away. The man was your soulmate. Who says you have to get over him?”

“He did.”

“No,” Bucky corrects. “He got married and five months later, count ‘em,” he holds up his hand, silver digits shining in the light. “Five, he had a baby, Stevie, in 1974. That’s almost thirty years after you died. Stop for a second and actually think about what that probably means happened for a guy like Howard.”

Steve is looking at him a little blank, like he still isn’t getting it. He couldn’t always see reality through the idealism of that oversized, often overtaxed heart when they were younger. Bucky never knew Howard like Steve obviously but he was still friends with the man. His playboy reputation before Steve was real and but if Tony’s offhand remarks are anything to go by, Howard probably didn’t start over with some young thing in his late fifties because of romance.

“Steve, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a love story.”

He makes it to the count of three before Steve puts two and two together and gets four and crumbles into Bucky’s shoulder. He doesn’t cry so much as he shakes with his neck, his fist clenched in Bucky’s t-shirt. “I just wanted you all to be happy and safe. Thats all I was fighting for and I couldn’t manage that for either of you.”

“I know but Tony’s okay and I’m okay and that’s something isn’t?” Bucky asks even though that isn’t really enough. He tells Darcy about it that night in bed, when they’re curled together in her bed. She combs her fingers through his hair and sighs. 

“Steve’s a guy who’s been through a lot over a short period of time without much time to actually think about it,” Darcy observes. “It’s possible that it is enough, he just hasn’t allowed himself to really, you know, deal.”

“I wouldn’t know what dealing even looks like, Darce.”

“Luckily he’s got therapists for that. So its not your job.”

“But I’m-“

“His friend. His best friend.” She traces his collarbone over his t-shirt. “That’s all you need to be. Trust me. I’ve never gone through what he has but if I had I wouldn’t want Jane to be my fixer. I’d just want her to be my Jane. Be his Bucky, whatever that means.”

Bucky’s not sure what that means. That’s okay because he is figuring it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Come [tumblr](http://dancinbutterfly.tumblr.com/) with me!


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